


The Message

by sheliesshattered (glasscannon)



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Gallifrey, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Post-Episode: s12e02 Spyfall Part 2, Post-Episode: s12e03 Orphan 55, Thasmin if you squint, moody Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22261624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/sheliesshattered
Summary: A light has been flashing on the TARDIS console for the last few days, and Yaz finally confronts the Doctor about it. She had no idea it would be the key to uncovering everything.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 22
Kudos: 299





	The Message

“Doctor?” Yaz said, trying to keep out of her voice any trepidation over breaking the quiet of the console room.

“Hm?” the Doctor said, not looking up from screen on the console that she’d been glued to for the last hour or more. Yaz clenched her teeth but tried to push her annoyance away. At least she’d responded at all, which was a marginal improvement from her behaviour of the last day or two.

Ryan and Graham had eventually tired of her terse silences and retreated to the deeper, cozier parts of the TARDIS, but some nagging feeling had kept Yaz in the console room with the Doctor, though she had hardly even acknowledged her presence. If Yasmin had thought things had been bad after their run-in with the Master, it’d only gotten worse following their misadventure on Orphan 55. The Doctor’s mood had fallen further, souring in a way that Yaz struggled to understand. Gone was her cheerful, bubbly friend, and she wasn’t at all sure about the woman who remained.

But she was still the Doctor, she’d argued with herself, half a dozen times already. Still the same woman she would follow to the end of the universe and beyond. Just because she was in a strop didn’t mean she wasn’t _her_ , and Yasmin wouldn’t be much of a friend if she let her faith waver any time the Doctor was a bit moody. Or so she kept trying to convince herself.

Besides, the thing she needed to talk to the Doctor about was actually starting to genuinely worry her. “There’s a light on the console, just there,” she said, pointing. “It’s been blinking the last several days. Never seen it do that before.”

“Yep,” the Doctor said, still pretending her attention was completely absorbed in whatever it was she was browsing on the galactic hub.

“Should it be doing that?”

The Doctor sighed noisily. “It’s just a light, Yaz. It’s built to flash. That’s its sole purpose in existing.”

“Doesn’t it mean something, though?”

“Usually does.”

Yaz clenched her teeth again. “Something bad, I mean?” All things considered, she’d managed to keep her voice impressively neutral.

“Why would it mean something bad?” the Doctor demanded, finally looking up from the screen in front of her. Where once that question might have come with a curious, confused tone, now she just sounded annoyed, maybe even offended.

“Well, on a car, a light blinking like that usually means refuel or check engine or whatever.”

“Right, because the TARDIS is _so_ much like a car,” the Doctor said sarcastically, turning back to the monitor.

Maybe she just needed to come at this from a different direction, Yaz thought, struggling for patience. “Why’d it just start doing it recently?”

The Doctor was quiet for a long moment, and Yaz started to wonder if she was going to end the conversation by simply refusing to answer. “It’s like a blinking light on an answerphone — no, wait, you’re too young to remember answerphones. It just means I have a message, that’s all.”

“I understand what voicemail is, Doctor,” she replied, and oh, _there_ was some of her own tetchiness that she’d been trying to keep under wraps. “Why haven’t you listened to it?” she asked, smoothing out her tone.

“Haven’t you ever ignored a message you’d rather not see?”

“I suppose,” Yaz said. “But curiosity usually gets to me in the end, even if it’s someone I’d rather not hear from.”

“Keep that curiosity then, Yaz,” the Doctor said, clearly a dismissal. “It’ll serve you well.”

“And where’s your curiosity gone?” she snarked back before she could stop herself.

The Doctor looked up from the console screen again, leveling a look at Yaz, her eyes ancient and unamused. Yaz stared her down, despite the chill creeping up her spine, until finally the Doctor shook her head and dropped her gaze back to the monitor. “That’s the TARDIS-to-TARDIS messaging system,” she said, her voice grudgingly more open. “So far as I know, there are only two other TARDISes still out there, besides mine. And I don’t particularly want to talk to the pilots of either. And if curiosity wants to try having a staring contest with me, we can check back in in a century or so and see which of us is winning.”

_Bit Wicked Witch of the West, but you get the gist_ , O had said, in the moments before they’d found out who he really was. It wasn’t until much, much later that she’d put together the pieces, realised that the flying house they’d seen was the Master’s TARDIS, disguised the same way the Doctor’s TARDIS was disguised as a police box. Who did the other one belong to, then? Some other ‘Time Lord’ — that was what the Doctor had called herself, wasn’t it? Avoiding the Master Yaz understood, but it could just as easily be from the other TARDIS, couldn’t it?

“Are you worried it’s from... him?” she asked, trying her very best to be sympathetic to how the Doctor must be feeling.

“Like I said, not anxious to talk to either of them.” Once again it was clear the Doctor meant to end the conversation there, but this was the most she’d talked in _days_ , and Yaz wasn’t about to walk away now and let her wallow in her quiet misery alone, no matter how much her nerves were fraying.

“Who’s the other one? The other pilot the message could be from?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the Doctor bit out. “Listen, just _forget_ the message, Yaz, I’m not going to listen to it.”

“Could be important, though, couldn’t it?”

“ _Leave it alone_ ,” the Doctor snapped, jerking her gaze up to her.

Yaz blinked, taken aback. She’d never heard that tone from the Doctor before, certainly not directed at her. “You know what, Doctor?” she said, anger making a flush creep up her neck. “You’re right: curiosity does serve me well.” She reached for the button next to the blinking light, mashing it down even as the Doctor lunged to stop her.

A hologram flickered to life a few feet away, and to her relief it wasn’t the familiar image of the Master, but rather a woman with straight brown hair, cut not unlike the Doctor’s. Her hologram stared directly ahead, shifting her weight slightly and tucking her hair behind her ears, as if nervous.

“Hello, Doctor,” the image of the woman said in a Blackpool accent. “If I’ve managed the messaging system like I think I have, this should reach you at the right point in your timestream, the one best chrono-aligned to mine. Which hopefully also means you remember who I am. If not this could be... awkward. But please know, I’m only contacting you because I need your help—”

The hologram shut off, and Yaz looked over to find the Doctor with her hand on a lever, hunched over, chin tilted down so that her hair obscured her face.

“I told you,” she said, voice heavy with what Yaz suspected were smothered tears, “to _leave it_.”

“Who was she, Doctor?”

She breathed raggedly for a moment. “An old... friend.”

“Like you and the Master are old friends?”

“ _No_ ,” the Doctor bit out. “Clara is nothing like— _No_.”

She was definitely crying, and if she’d been any less defensively closed off in her posture, Yaz might have tried to hug her, offer some kind of comfort for whatever it was she was going through.

“What, then? Like an ex?”

The Doctor actually seemed to flinch at that, and despite her annoyance with her friend these past few days, the last thing Yaz wanted to do was hurt her. A surge of guilt flashed through her, overwhelming the rest.

“Yes, an ex,” the Doctor ground out, her face still hidden.

Yaz didn’t know what to do with that information. The idea of the Doctor having past romantic relationships seemed so odd to her. There had been times, of course, when Yaz had thought they might have been building towards that themselves, but always talked herself out of the possibility, convinced herself that romance simply wasn’t the way the Doctor was built. And yet that was apparently exactly what this beautiful young woman from Blackpool was to the Doctor. 

Or, well, she might in fact be a Time Lord, she reasoned. Why wouldn’t she be, after all? The Doctor’s accent was pure Yorkshire, despite being from a planet Yaz had never heard of before, and the Master sounded so thoroughly British that he had fooled all of them into believing he was human. Having a Blackpool accent and an ordinary name like ‘Clara’ hardly proved anything.

“Well, I can understand wanting to avoid an ex,” Yaz said, aiming her voice for reasonable and soothing. “But she said she needed your help—”

The Doctor stood and turned away in a flurry of coattails, pressing the heel of each hand to her eyes. “She’s clever,” she said with her back to Yaz. “Really, astonishingly clever. Whatever it is, she can figure it out herself.”

Yaz was about to reply, but was cut off by a knock at the door of the TARDIS, and she turned to look at it, startled.

“Don’t answer that,” the Doctor said, her tone no less commanding for the trace of tears still in it.

“But... We’re in the Vortex,” she said, confused. “How can there be someone at the door when we’re in the Vortex?”

“Please, just, don’t answer it. I’m begging you, Yaz.”

“Doctor?” came a muffled call through the door. The woman with the Blackpool accent — _Clara_ , the Doctor had called her. “I know you’re in there,” she went on. “I need to talk to you.”

“Please,” the Doctor whispered. “Don’t.”

“I’m going to use my key, Doctor,” Clara said. “Please, I just need to talk to you.”

“She has a _key_?” Yaz hissed at the Doctor.

“Of course she has a key, of course she kept it,” the Doctor muttered, though Yaz wasn’t sure it was entirely meant for her.

There was the sound of a key turning in a lock, and the Doctor went rigid. Yasmin threw a look her direction, then took a few steps towards the door, just as it opened and swung inwards by a fraction.

“Okay, new desktop,” Yaz heard, though it was spoken quietly, “that’s a good sign.” The woman angled the door slightly more open and poked her head inside, looking exactly as she had in her hologram. Her gaze fixed immediately on the Doctor, still stood with her back to the door, then slid over to land on Yaz.

“Hi,” she said, smiling kindly. “My name’s Clara. Sorry to drop in on you like this.”

“Yasmin Khan,” she replied. “How did you do that? Knock on the door like that, when we’re in the Vortex?”

The woman’s eyes flickered to the Doctor and back again, and she stepped fully inside and closed the door behind her. “The TARDIS messaging system can be used as a tracer, if you know what you’re doing.”

“And you always know what you’re doing, don’t you?” the Doctor said, her voice subdued. 

Clara took a deep breath as though steeling herself. “Hello, Doctor.”

The Doctor finally turned around and faced them, her eyes rimmed in red. “Hello, Clara.”

“You know who I am, then,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’ll make this easier.”

“ _Nothing_ can make this easier,” the Doctor said immediately, some of the sharpness returning to her tone.

“Faster, then, if nothing else,” Clara replied. “I need your help.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor said. 

“I know,” Clara sighed. “It’s dangerous, I know that. And believe me, if I had any other options...”

“No, I mean, you should have gone a long time ago. You shouldn’t even be— _Why_ are you still here?”

Yaz was stood close enough to her to see the tears start to gather in the stranger’s eyes, and as much as she felt like she was intruding on an intensely private moment between this woman and the Doctor, she couldn’t tear herself away.

“I had wiggle room and a TARDIS, and I needed time to process... everything,” Clara said. “I was always going to go back. I know that I have to— I know how important it is. That’s why I had to see you.”

“Can we skip the last hurrah, this time? It never seems to go well for us.”

Hurt flashed across Clara’s face, but her voice was level as she said, “You’ve been back, haven’t you? I’ve been tracking your TARDIS’s movements, I saw you land there. That’s why I sent you the message now, I had to be sure that you knew, that you’d _seen_ Gallifrey—”

“What do _you_ know about it?” the Doctor snarled, taking a large step towards Clara.

“Not as much as you, I’m guessing,” Clara said, seeming unflappable in the face of the Doctor’s anger. “I went back, like I promised I would, and when I saw what had happened, my first thought—”

“Your first thought was of me?” the Doctor demanded, bitingly sarcastic. “Well, rightly so, I’d reckon. You know my track record on that front better than anyone. That’s _just_ the sort of thing I’d do, isn’t it?”

“Doctor!” Clara snapped. “Of course I didn’t think you’d done that! I was worried _you_ were somewhere in that rubble. That Rassilon had come back looking for revenge, or the Daleks had found a way through Gallifrey’s defenses, or I don’t even know! I was _worried_ about you!”

Rubble, on Gallifrey? That the Doctor had _seen_? Yaz frowned, thinking through the Doctor’s moods of late, trying to remember when exactly it’d started, and just how long that message light had been flashing.

“Well, I’m touched,” the Doctor said flatly. “But as you can see, I’m fine.”

Clara blinked back tears and nodded. “My second thought,” she said, then paused to swallow heavily. “My second thought was that there’s no way for me to get back, now. That’s why I had to see you.”

“Get back where?” the Doctor asked, sounding genuinely confused to Yaz’s ears, if still rather sharp.

“The Trap Street,” Clara said, whatever that meant. “There’s no one left to put me back. And I— I don’t know what to do, Doctor. I don’t know what comes next.”

The Doctor closed her eyes and shook her head. “You shouldn’t have waited so long.”

“I know I shouldn’t have done, but it’s too late now. I tried to get to an earlier version of Gallifrey, but my TARDIS wouldn’t cooperate.”

“Temporal safety protocols. You’ve seen it now, you can’t go back to before it happened. Can’t risk corrupting the timeline.”

“We did it once before,” Clara said, voice tinged with hope.

“With the help of the galaxy-eater,” the Doctor said. “No such luck, this time.”

She sighed and nodded. “So what happens if I can’t go back?” she asked. “If I can’t... If I’m stuck like this? Is it a danger to the universe?”

“ _That’s_ what you’re worried about?” the Doctor demanded. “A civilisation gone and you’re worried your continued existence might poke a hole in the universe?”

“And unravel the Web of Time? _Yes_ , that’s what I’m worried about! Why aren’t you? What is _wrong_ with you, Doctor? This isn’t like you.”

“You don’t have any idea what I’m like. New face, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Don’t you do that, don’t you dare,” Clara said, eyes bright with tears. “Don’t treat me like I’m somebody else. I _know_ you, I know all your faces, and I know when you’re not yourself! Last time it was that whole business with your confession dial, so go on, tell me what it is this time. What _happened_ to you?”

“ _What happened?_ ” the Doctor thundered, striding over to Clara with such ferocity that Yaz took a step back, watching as Clara stood her ground and lifted her chin. “What do you _think_ happened?? I went home to Gallifrey and found _that_ , that’s what happened! And it was the Master—” She cut herself off with a choked sound, hands curling into fists.

“Missy?” Clara asked, her eyebrows drawing together.

The Doctor shook her head. “He regenerated. Back to his old tricks again. Do you remember what you said to me, that day in the graveyard with the Cybermen? You said that if I’d ever let the Master live, everything that happened was on _me_. And I just don’t learn, do I? I keep making the same _stupid_ choices, out of the same _stupid_ hope that this time, _this time_ it’ll be different. And now—”

The tears finally seemed to catch up with the Doctor, and she crumpled forward with a tortured, muffled sob. Yasmin took a step towards her out of instinct, but Clara was closer, quicker, and caught the Doctor, pulling her into a tight hug. 

“It’s not your fault,” she said fiercely. “You’re not responsible for what the Master chooses to do.”

The Doctor pressed her face to Clara’s shoulder, hands clenched in the back of her jumper. “ _Of course_ it’s my fault. You were right back then. Every time I’ve let him live, all the destruction he’s caused, again and again. And now you’re _stuck_ , and they’re all gone, Clara, _they’re all gone_. That whole planet, not a single life-sign. I didn’t push the button this time, but I may as well have done.” Her words dissolved into repressed cries, and Yaz’s heart twisted. 

Gallifrey. A civilisation gone. Not a single life-sign. _Can we visit your home?_ she’d asked, never once considering that there might not be anything left _to_ visit.

Clara met her gaze over the Doctor’s shoulder and gestured her over with her eyes. It only took her a moment to catch her meaning, and then she was crossing the short distance between them, wrapping herself around the Doctor’s back and holding her tight, half hugging Clara as well. The Doctor found one of her hands behind Clara’s back and clung to it like a lifeline, her grip almost painful.

“Did you know?” Clara asked her quietly.

“No,” Yaz said, and only then realised that she was crying as well. “Something had obviously been bothering her, but I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Doctor,” she added, clutching her close.

“Oh Yaz,” the Doctor said, voice thick with tears, “I’ve been so awful to you. I’ve just been so, so _angry_.”

“You never were very good with grief,” Clara said gently.

“Is that what this is?” the Doctor asked, sounding lost. “Maybe if I could just grieve properly, I could get past this, come to grips with being... being _orphaned_ again. But it’s _my fault_ , the Master being alive at all, and look what’s come of it. I just never thought he’d do something like _this_.”

“Hey, Yaz,” Ryan called, accompanied by his approaching footsteps. “Do you know where—” He stopped, and she looked over to find him frozen on the stairs, his eyes wide. “What’s going on?” he asked, sounding worried.

“You should tell them,” Clara said softly, in a voice meant just for the Doctor. “Tell them everything. What you’ve lost and why it hurts. They’re your friends, and friends stand by you in times like these.”

“No,” Yaz said, hugging the Doctor tighter, “we’re not just her friends. We’re her _family_.”


End file.
